A growing number of states are refusing to cooperate fully with President Trump’s voter fraud commission, setting the stage for a showdown over the nation's elections.
The White House commission, led by Vice President Pence and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, has asked all 50 states and Washington D.C. to turn over publicly [sic] information on its voters, including names, birthdays, the last four digits of their Social Security numbers and party affiliation if the state law allows in the hopes of shoring up the nation’s election systems. [snip]
A bipartisan list of officials in at least 20 [21] states, including reliably red states like Mississippi and Oklahoma, had pushed back on the request as of Friday afternoon.
“In the event I were to receive correspondence from the Commission...My reply would be: They can go jump in the Gulf of Mexico and Mississippi is a great State to launch from,” Mississippi Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann, a Republican, said in a Friday statement.
Top Democratic officials in California, Kentucky, Massachusetts, New York and Virginia have all released statements blasting the commission and refusing to turn over any information. [snip]
The 21 states are California, Connecticut, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Mississippi, New Mexico, Nevada, New York, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, Virginia and Wisconsin.This commission is a transparent effort by Republicans to identify and dis-enfranchise Democratic constituencies (not "shoring up the nation's election systems") by erecting barriers to voting, purging voting registers and by other means of voter suppression. The commission grew out of ludicrous right- wing conspiracy mongering about "millions" of illegal votes being cast in the 2016 election, which was then taken up by Rump to assuage his ego that he hadn't really lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by almost 3 million. The Rump regime quickly pivoted from repeating lies about voter fraud in the last election to creating a commission that would work to suppress primarily Democratic voting under the guise of ensuring "electoral integrity." The obvious question being, if these treasonous slugs were truly interested in "electoral integrity" instead of voter suppression, they'd be rather more curious about how and why the Russian government jiggered our electoral system, and how that system can be protected in the future. Curious that they're not curious, no?
UPDATE: The number keeps growing --
UPDATE II: Make that 27 (and counting) --24 states won't provide voter data to Kobach: AZ, CA, CT, IN, KY, MA, MN, MS, NC, NM, ND, NV, NY, OH, OK, PA, RI, SD, TN, UT, VA, VT, WA, WI— Ari Berman (@AriBerman) June 30, 2017
27 states now opposing Kobach: AZ, CA, CT, IN, KY, MA, MN, MS, MT, NC, NM, ND, NV, NY, OH, OK, OR, PA, RI, SD, TN, TX, UT, VA, VT, WA, WI— Ari Berman (@AriBerman) July 1, 2017
